As were are starting to finish up Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night, I am starting to get a better understanding of how it was living as a Jew in the concentration camps during the holocaust. “ What are You, my God? I thought angrily. How do You compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance? What does Your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery?” (Wiesel 66). In this passage in the book, I am getting an understanding on how the Jews faith was starting to diminish, and how they were starting to question God’s existence. I do enjoy Wiesel’s writing for this very reason: that he takes us into his thinking, and makes it as though we are there with him, questioning God’s existence also. In addition to the first quote where Wiesel was losing faith he writes later: “Where is merciful God, where is He?” someone behind me was asking. (Wiesel 64). Right now, mostly all the Jews were questioning their faith. All of them were asking the same question: How could our God be doing these things to us? Was there even a God? Today at the museum, there was a man speaking talking about how he survived the Holocaust, and how there was a man thanking God during the harsh times. The man asked him how he could be thanking God, and he said he was because he was thankful that God hadn’t made him into one of the ruthless Germans.
The way Wiesel writes his memoir is almost like it’s written in prose, he is extremely descriptive with his writing, and his sentences flow, but he keeps the plot fast-paced and moving like the greatest poems are. There was one part I read that almost brought me to tears: the uncertainty of it, the questions it left, and the horrifying thought that it was pure hope that was keeping these people alive when there truly was nothing to hope for. “Take care of your son. He is very weak, very dehydrated. Take care of yourselves, you must avoid selections. Eat! Anything. Anytime. Eat all you can. The weak don’t last very long around here”… And he himself was so thin, so withered, so weak… “The only thing that keeps me alive,” he kept saying, “is to know that Reizel and the little ones are still alive. Were it not for them, I would give up.” One evening, he came to see us, his face radiant. “A transport just arrived from Antwerp. I shall go to see them tomorrow. Surely they will hav...
I agree with everything you have said and find it really interesting how you remembered your experience at the holocaust museum and used it in your blog. I am glad this book means as much to you as it does for me. The only thing I think you should add is specifying that it is not just any museum but the holocaust museum.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post Dylan. Although I was a little confused what theme you are trying to convey. It looks like your theme is loss and gain of faith or just faith by itself. But if that was to be your theme I think you did great job.
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